The Imitation Game – A Movie Review

During World War II, mathematician Alan Turing tries to crack the enigma code with help from fellow mathematicians. We saw this last weekend, and while there’s a long way to go in 2015, I won’t be surprised if this remains at or near the top of my 2015 list of favorites. Turing opens saying, “…But if you choose to stay, remember that you chose to be here. What happens from this moment forward is not my responsibility. It’s yours. Pay attention.” Do that. Stay in the room, and pay attention.

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Birdman – A Movie Review

We watched this nearly a month ago, and I’m just getting to writing the review. A washed-up actor who once played an iconic superhero must overcome his ego and family trouble as he mounts a Broadway play in a bid to reclaim his past glory. It was an interesting movie, but frankly got a bit tiring. The setting, a theater, must have been the largest theater backstage ever.

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Christmas 2014 at Deep Something

We’re all ready for Christmas here are Deep Something. You’ll notice the site is all decorated, and in the sidebar, we’d like for you to vote for your favorite holiday movies. At my house, the lights are also strung. The tree is up, and actually most of the presents are either here or on the way. I still have Christmas Cards to do, and wrapping, but that’s about it.

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Birdman – A Movie Review

Riggan Thomas, once known quite well to movie theater goers as an iconic super hero called “The Birdman” had recently turned down a third installment of the franchise. Now washed up, he attempts to reinvent himself as a director by staging a new retelling of a classic Broadway dramatic play called “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. We saw this last weekend, and it was an interesting movie..

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Serving Life – A Movie Review

This was a very interesting documentary filmed in Angola Prison in Louisiana. It was released in 2011, and is the story of reforms which helped take Angola Prison off the top slot and the most violent prison in the U.S. The Warden came to realize that he a large number of inmates serving sentences of life without parole, and older inmates with sentences so long, they would most likely die in prison. Actor Forest Whitaker narrates the story of a group of inmate volunteers who staff their own hospice inside a maximum security prison in Louisiana where the average sentence is more than 90 years.

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Bigger Stronger Faster – A Movie Review

In America, we define ourselves in the superlative: we are the biggest, strongest, fastest country in the world. Is it any wonder that so many of our heroes are on performance enhancing drugs? Director Christopher Bell explores America’s win-at-all-cost culture by examining how his two brothers became members of the steroid-subculture in an effort to realize their American dream.

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Severe Clear – A Movie Review

As part of the first wave in the War on Terror, First Lieutenant Mike Scotti (awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with Combat “V”) served on the front lines during the 21 day advance to Baghdad. His experiences in Afghanistan as well as Iraq put him face to face with the sobering realities of war on a daily basis. Severe Clear offers an unflinching look at life on the battlefield through the eyes of someone who was there.

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Tribute to a Friend I Never Met – Tom Magliozzi

One of the hosts of perhaps the funniest show on any medium, Tom Magliozzi, of Car Talk on National Public Radio (NPR) died earlier this week from complications associate with Alzheimer’s Disease. I was fortunate to come across National Public Radio very many years ago, somewhere around the early ’80s. Tom and his brother Ray had done a car repair call in show on the Boston NPR station for about 10 years, and then I first them as they started doing a brief regular segment on NPR’s Weekend Edition each week. The show went on NPR nationally in 1987 and was on Saturday mornings.

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Movie Review – Conspiracy

This movie could have been entitled, “how to chair a board meeting” or “how not to chair a board meeting” – given that the outcome of the meeting was the “final solution”. Gen. Heidrich with consummate skill and care manipulated the gathered Nazi hierarchy to the pre-arranged and pre-destined solution to the Jewish question. The historical recreation of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which Nazi and SS leaders gathered in a Berlin suburb to discuss the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. Lead by SS-General Reinhard Heydrich, this group of high ranking German officials came to the historic and far reaching decision that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated in what would come to be known as the Holocaust.

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